“We are publicly
responsible for what happens in the schools. It is risky, of course,
but it’s a commitment that we believe
in.”

The speaker was
Teachers College President Susan Fuhrman, greeting a gathering of
nearly 200education leaders and New
YorkState education
officials at TC in late October to discuss expanding university and
public school partnerships statewide and creating models of cooperation
for school systems across the country.

By
“we,” Fuhrman was referring both to TC, which is in
the midst of an intensive new program of outreach to schools in
Harlem and other local
neighborhoods, and to institutions of higher education in general. By
“commitment,” she meant “a deep,
sustained partnership with schools in which the College shares
accountability for student
outcomes.”

A dominant theme at the
meeting was that, amid the current economic crisis and cutbacks in
public funding, partnerships between universities and public schools
could be the only way the nation’s school system will be able
to educate and train future generations.

Keynote speaker Linda Darling-Hammond,
Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University and
the founder of a high school in California, stressed that such
partnerships were not only possible, but necessary, to make the
American education system work for children, families and the economy
into the 21st century.

She noted that the United
States has slipped to
thirteenth from first in the world in the percentage of adults who
graduate college. As a result, it has had to import foreign workers.
“We are actually not able to fill the high-tech jobs with
graduates of our own, Darling-Hammond said. “We are not going
to move forward as a nation unless we address this
issue.”

The solution will require a complete
redesign of the nation’s education system, from pre-school
through college, and a closing of the achievement gap between minority
and white students—and that will not happen without increased
school-university partnerships, which “can create, protect
and document new educational designs,” Darling-Hammond
said.

TC Associate Vice President Nancy Streim,
who heads the Office of School & Community Partnerships, introduced a panel whose members described
three different approaches to university-community
partnerships—start-up, turnaround and wraparound.

Jennifer Raab, president of
HunterCollege in
New York City, said
Hunter’s decision to start HunterScienceHigh School in
2003 was driven by a “self interest” in creating a
pipeline of excellent high school graduates for the college. After
resolving in its favor some issues with the city regarding staff hiring
(Hunter wanted control) and responsibility for physical maintenance,
which Hunter did not want, the College opened the HunterScienceHigh School in
2003. Since then, nearly 99 percent of graduates of the high school
have gone to college, and of that number, nearly one-quarter to
HunterCollege.

Giving an example of the turnaround model,
C. Kent McGuire, Dean of Temple University’s
College of
Education
described Temple’s
Partnership Schools, which five years ago started running four
elementary and two middle schools (the total number has since dropped
to four) in the poorest ZIP codes of Philadelphia.
“We are attempting to create a direct pathway from
neighborhood schools to the University,” he said.
“The way had been, ‘don’t attempt to go
to Temple, but go to
community colleges.’ “

The program arose from a
“commitment of Temple to its
neighbors,” with whom the university had had a
“long, challenging relationship,” McGuire said.
Temple was turning itself
into a more residential college and raising its admissions standards at
a time when fewer than 50 percent of kids in its north Philadelphia neighborhood were going to
any college, let alone Temple.

Temple “surrounded the schools
with a range of support,” McGuire said, including
after-school programs, and became “highly visible in the
community” while providing their teachers with intensive
professional development, altering their work routines and sending more
Temple graduates into
the schools.

Temple program has
raised test scores, albeit from a low base, and performance has varied
widely among the lower-performing schools. But overall outcomes have
been good, McGuire said. “Violence is down, attendance is up,
parental involvement is up.”

TC Trustee James Comer, founder of the Comer
School Development Program at YaleUniversity, where
he is Maurice Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry, described his
program’s “wraparound” approach, which
bolsters educational intervention with a range of social services such
as nutritional and health counseling and working with parents. Comer,
who is a physician, said his model takes into account the broad
developmental needs of the child—not just the academic
needs—and the need for a community culture that supports
children’s aspirations to succeed.

“The social network has a great
influence on a parent and child,” he said. “This is
very important when we think about the dropout rate. I knew from the
beginning that I wanted to be a doctor, and I had a network that
protected me from the nay-sayers.”

Comer’s program, which began in
New Haven and now operates
in several cities, “all but closed the achievement
gap” in five years in Asheville, N.C.

Speakers emphasized that in successful
partnerships, the commitment on the higher education side must begin
with the president and faculty of a college or university. Panelist
Corey Bowman, who develops school partnerships at the University of
Pennsylvania, said Penn brings all the resources of the higher
education institution to bear on its programs—not
just the Graduate School of Education, but the School of Social Policy
& Practice, the medical school, and the science, arts and
humanities programs, as well as an academically based community service
program that has Penn undergraduate students working in Philadelphia
schools.

Another recurring message was that higher
education must act as partners with the schools rather than as
directors of collaborations, and not treat schools as simply places to
do research. They must establish long-term, consistent cooperation over
several years that helps provide schools the support they
need.

Yet Raab also said that the higher education
partner must be able to choose the leadership of a public school it
partners with, and to work closely with the school on management and
teacher training. She said she had been unwilling to put HunterCollege’s
name on a school for which the college could not make hiring
decisions.

Johanna Duncan-Poitier, New
YorkState’s
Senior Deputy Commissioner of Education for preK-through-16, said that
the state actively supports the creation of university-school
partnerships as the way to transform education from pre-kindergarten
through college.

“This isn’t altruism any
more,” she declared. By 2020, 60 percent of jobs are going to
require a college education. The American system is graduating about
four percent more students than in 2004. “At that rate, 14
million people will not have jobs,” she said.

Worsening the outlook, about one-third of
students who start college don’t
finish.Fifteen percent of students
in four-year colleges, and 48 percent of those in two-year colleges,
require remedial studies. Duncan-Poitier said that showing results from
the preK-12 system’s failure to graduate students who are
ready for college. “We need to start reviewing and renewing
graduate standards, with higher education at the table,” she
said. “We know that students who participate in partnership
programs succeed.”

A final panel examined the issue through the
lens of the current economic crisis and suggested that, now more than
ever, preK-12 schools must rely on higher education’s
more-stable financial resources as well as programmatic and research
capabilities. Because New York City
can’t afford to do much educational research,
“universities are really our R&D
departments,” said Photeine Anagnostopoulos, chief operating
officer in the Chancellor’s Office at the New York City
Department of Education. “They bring in what
they’ve learned around the country.”

The economic downturn could make school
systems more open to new cooperation with higher education, argued
Seymour Fliegel president of the Center for Educational
Innovation-Public Education Association. “There’s
never been a better time to get creative.”